


Brace

by dareyoutoread



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4025512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dareyoutoread/pseuds/dareyoutoread
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He builds the first one from the hinges of a truck tailgate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brace

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, ssstrychnine: 1,015 words. Challenge completed! ;-)

He builds the first one from the hinges of a truck tailgate. It hurts like fucking hell to wear and sometimes, when he bends the wrong way, the hinges _twist_ and drop that knee right out from under him. He adds a couple extra straps, cinches the whole thing down a little tighter, and calls it good enough.

He’s brawling with a crazy water junkie and five of his pals the day it breaks, and for a second, Max thinks it’s his _leg_ that’s snapped. The noise is gunshot-loud and spooks the junkie, and Max ends up driving his bad knee forward into the man’s stomach and impaling him with the broken ends of the brace. 

What do you know, still useful.

He guesses the other five figure it’s not worth fighting a man wild enough to kill somebody with his own broken leg, ‘cause they scatter into the gathering sandstorm.

Max chokes and limps his way back to the car and slams the door on the sand while he works at the straps. When the thing finally comes free, he can see there’s no point trying to weld it as it is - the metal on one side is cracked halfway down, and one good stomp would probably shatter it. He lets out an irritated breath and looks around for what else he’s got.

Shit-ton of nothing.

So in the end, he shortens the brace. Snaps off the shattered end with a pair of bolt cutters, salvages the usable metal, bolts it back together with as many of the original parts as he can manage (jams a lug nut through where one of the pins had cracked). He has to settle for doing a lot more cutting and welding - and it’s too much time in one place, and he’s skittery and looking over his shoulder every few seconds - but eventually, he ends up with something that works. It sits lower, puts more pressure on his thigh, but it’s also got better support, so fair trade. A couple days later, he cuts more leather from a dead drifter’s coat to pad the top strap. It’s better. He’ll settle for not falling apart.

It saves his life, that one. Well, Furiosa does, but it helps. He’s pitching from the side of the war rig and her metal hand locks on his metal brace and the thing fucking _holds_ , like a miracle. The straps bite into his thigh and his knee and he feels like his whole leg’s about to come off at the hip, but he’s not dead, so he’ll take it. When he finally finds his feet again, the brace is too loose, rattling and squealing its protest about holding his 180-pound ass in the air off the side of a moving tanker, but hell, he’ll settle for anything since the damn thing kept him breathing.

He settles for it till she offers something better. It’s a barter, really. He’ll bring the parts she needs for the new irrigation system; she’ll build him a new brace. She can see it’s hurting him, she says in that quiet way. Looks even more worn out than the rest of his gear. Anyone else, they’d be pointing out a weakness. He looks at the leather straps around her arm, figures she’s just stating a fact. He shrugs.

Three weeks later, he’s back with the parts.

It’s damn good timing, too, cuz fuck if the thing doesn’t know its end is coming and give up on him a week into the trip. There’s nothing to be done - he’s traveling light, hasn’t got the tools to fix it, so he limps like a crippled dog for two weeks - limps through every fight and lays down for every rest with that blinding white pain throbbing behind his eyes (it blocks out the nightmares, but of course he still can’t fucking sleep). He comes back (not home, just...back) with his knee so swollen the new brace won’t even fit. 

When she sees it, she blows out a puff of air through her nose - not irritated, not exactly - crouches down, and studies his leg like it’s a busted carburetor. In the end, they wrap the knee - two of his hands and one of hers, and she’s careful not to brush the swollen skin any more than she has to - and re-settle the brace into place. She punches a couple of extra holes in the (padded) leather straps, cautions him against cutting off too much circulation, and leaves him to test it alone.

Like her hands, it’s soft and steel, and a damn sight better than anything Max has built for himself. He tries to find her and tell her, but she’s off chasing down rogue war pups and settling some sort of dispute over water distribution, and he’s not going to interrupt. 

Besides, it was a barter.

When he mostly destroys the new brace (along with half his leg, four ribs, and the left side of his face) a week later, getting ambushed by a war party, she patches it (and him) up without comment. She fiddles with the repairs so long he finally realizes she’s stalling, trying to keep him off his feet, but when she finally hands it back it _is_ better - reinforced, quieter. He mumbles his thanks and leaves the next morning.

After that, repairs become a tradition. He’ll bring it back, once every few months, when the road leads that way, and sit on the low worktable, watching her fiddle, adjust, improve the design. Sometimes, she’ll ask him questions: “How does this move?” “Does this rub here?” “How the hell did you crack this _again_?” and he’ll grunt one-word answers at her: “Fine.” “ ‘Little.” “Accident.” More often, they sit in silence, just the clank of metal and the soft chafe of the leather as she works. It’s good.

The brace is better every time - stronger, softer, more range of motion. It never stops him circling back for repairs, though. He guesses he left _good enough_ behind a while back.


End file.
